o do right for the sake of reward,' I go
farther and say, 'No man _can_ do right for the sake of reward. A man
may do a thing indifferent, he may do a thing wrong, for the sake of
reward; but a thing in itself right, done for reward, would, in the very
doing, cease to be right.' At the same time, if a man does right, he
cannot escape being rewarded for it; and to refuse the reward, would be
to refuse life, and foil the creative love. The whole question is of the
kind of reward expected. What first reward for doing well, may I look
for? To grow purer in heart, and stronger in the hope of at length
seeing God. If a man be not after this fashion rewarded, he must perish.
As to happiness or any lower rewards that naturally follow the first--is
God to destroy the law of his universe, the divine sequence of cause and
effect in order to say: 'You must do well, but you shall gain no good by
it; you must lead a dull joyless existence to all eternity, that lack of
delight may show you pure'? Could Love create with such end in view?
Righteousness does not demand creation; it is Love, not Righteousness,
that cannot live alone. The creature must already be, ere Righteousness
can put in a claim. But, hearts and souls there, Love itself, which
created for love and joy, presses the demand of Righteousness first.

A righteousness that created misery in order to up-hold itself, would be
a righteousness that was unrighteous. God will die for righteousness,
but never create for a joyless righteousness. To call into being the
necessarily and hopelessly incomplete, would be to wrong creation in its
very essence. To create for the knowledge of himself, and then not give
himself, would be injustice even to cruelty; and if God give himself,
what other reward--there can be no _further_--is not included, seeing he
is Life and all her children--the All in all? It will take the utmost
joy God can give, to let men know him; and what man, knowing him, would
mind losing every other joy? Only what other joy could keep from
entering, where the God of joy already dwelt? The law of the universe
holds, and will hold, the name of the Father be praised:--'Whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he also reap.' 'They have sown the wind, and they
shall reap the whirlwind.' 'He that soweth to his flesh, shall of the
flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the spirit, shall of the
spirit reap life everlasting.' 'Whosoever hath, to him shall be given,
and he shall